Suzanne Caygill – pioneer of colour consultation

The American Suzanne Caygill (1911-1994) developed her system of colour consulting in the 1940s, which focuses on every person’s individuality. She distinguished between the seasonal types spring, summer, autumn and winter, but those four skin types were only a basic framework. Suzanne Caygill distinguished between many different subtypes such as Classic Winter, Soft Winter, Patrician Winter, Dynamic Winter and Exotic Winter. The allocation of her clients to a season was primarily based on their personality, charisma, posture and voice, and only secondarily on the individual pigmentation of skin, hair and eyes. In Suzanne Caygill’s opinion, characteristics and colours from more than one season are found in many people, which makes it necessary to compile a specifically adjusted colour passport for every individual customer to ensure their individuality. She also distinguished between female and male colour schemes. While she picked the colours of flowers or blossoms for women, the colours of minerals and metals seemed to be more suitable for men.

Suzanne Caygill allocated the following key qualities to the colours of the respective season:

Spring: clarity

Summer: softness

Autumn: satiety

Winter: contrast

In the late 1970s, Suzanne Caygill founded the “Academy of Color”, an eight-week training program for colour consultation for select students. Over the next 15 years, she trained more than 40 colour consultants.

In 1980, Suzanne Caygill published a book about her work, “Color: The Essence of You”, in order to help her customers understand her basic principles better. In the preface she states that the colour theory presented in her book “aims at awakening an intuitive and instinctive impulse in every human to the constellation of colours in the universal structure, which he or she is connected with cosmically”. For Suzanne Caygill, colour meant vibration in the physical sense, which spreads to the person in his / her entirety. She also considered nature with its rhythm of seasons as the true teacher. She wrote, ”Colour is nonverbal communication. Clothes are a symbol of what we think of ourselves. Design and colour are the means of expressing personality in action. We need the reflection of the truth about us in our clothes and our furniture, so we won’t project anything artificial or distorted. By recognizing colour as a key to our selves, by recognizing the harmonies in nature, we find a way of seeing exactly who we are, a way leading us out of personal stiffness, a way to connect us with those energies that allow us to be ourselves. The more we are able to accept the colourful messages in the rhythm of the universe, the more authentic we become as personalities, the more happiness we gain for ourselves and the more we give to others.”

The archived documents of Suzanne Caygill are kept at Cornell University in the USA.

The American Suzanne Caygill (1911-1994) developed her system of colour consulting in the 1940s, which focuses on every person’s individuality. She distinguished between the seasonal types spring, summer, autumn and winter, but those four skin types were only a basic framework. Suzanne Caygill distinguished between many different subtypes such as Classic Winter, Soft Winter, Patrician Winter, Dynamic Winter and Exotic Winter. The allocation of her clients to a season was primarily based on their personality, charisma, posture and voice, and only secondarily on the individual pigmentation of skin, hair and eyes. In Suzanne Caygill’s opinion, characteristics and colours from more than one season are found in many people, which makes it necessary to compile a specifically adjusted colour passport for every individual customer to ensure their individuality. She also distinguished between female and male colour schemes. While she picked the colours of flowers or blossoms for women, the colours of minerals and metals seemed to be more suitable for men.

Suzanne Caygill allocated the following key qualities to the colours of the respective season:

Spring: clarity

Summer: softness

Autumn: satiety

Winter: contrast

In the late 1970s, Suzanne Caygill founded the “Academy of Color”, an eight-week training program for colour consultation for select students. Over the next 15 years, she trained more than 40 colour consultants.

In 1980, Suzanne Caygill published a book about her work, “Color: The Essence of You”, in order to help her customers understand her basic principles better. In the preface she states that the colour theory presented in her book “aims at awakening an intuitive and instinctive impulse in every human to the constellation of colours in the universal structure, which he or she is connected with cosmically”. For Suzanne Caygill, colour meant vibration in the physical sense, which spreads to the person in his / her entirety. She also considered nature with its rhythm of seasons as the true teacher. She wrote, ”Colour is nonverbal communication. Clothes are a symbol of what we think of ourselves. Design and colour are the means of expressing personality in action. We need the reflection of the truth about us in our clothes and our furniture, so we won’t project anything artificial or distorted. By recognizing colour as a key to our selves, by recognizing the harmonies in nature, we find a way of seeing exactly who we are, a way leading us out of personal stiffness, a way to connect us with those energies that allow us to be ourselves. The more we are able to accept the colourful messages in the rhythm of the universe, the more authentic we become as personalities, the more happiness we gain for ourselves and the more we give to others.”

The archived documents of Suzanne Caygill are kept at Cornell University in the USA.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Colour and Image Consulting
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